By all early reports, Windows 8 is going to be a good operating system. Microsoft's hegemony may be crumbling in a mobile computing onslaught, but its core empire remains undimmed. However, whereas Windows 7 had three versions, Windows 8 will apparently be ballooning to 9 versions.

MS is a company and trying to maximize their profits. No one should deny them of that regardless of how other companies price there products. But also it isn't just MS trying to milk as much as they can from customers. I've seen it over and over of businesses haggling with price versus features when buy anything.

If MS were to have one price point and product for windows you may have just as many people complaining about paying for features they would never use. Regardless of the price a business that will use a machine for just browsing the web, email creation and in house software that requires actual hardware versus a terminal solution will complain about having to pay the same price as a full workstation.

It isn't just MS doing this either. Many CAD/ERP Systems... package version are priced at different price points. Often times they use the same installation media but your serial id controls what features are enabled or not. CNC controlled equipment is even worse because you pay for different hardware and software combinations.

And most of the reasons why is someone at some point and time tried to negotiate a lower price for using a reduced set of features.